In response to my action item, I reviewed references [1], [2], and [3], and didn't notice anything specifically referring to mixing "normative" and "informative" within a "section", other than Good Practice 2 in [3] and Requirement 7 in [4].
Good Practice 2 has as a technique:
"Techniques
1. For each section in the specification:
* Determine if the content is normative or informative and explicitly label it as either "normative" or "informative."
"
I'm not sure if the "Introduction" of the latest ATAG draft specifically meets this good practice. I thought the "Introduction" part itself was a "section". Then how can each of the parts within the "Introduction" be "sections"? Are they "subsections" of "Introduction" section? If so, then maybe they can be labeled as "subsections", with an explanatory sentence right after "Introduction" heading saying something like "The Introduction section is composed of the following subsections: .., which may have differing normativity designations " or something like that? Or at least label each of the parts of "Introduction" as "subsections"? Or maybe move "Definition of Authoring Tool" to "section" level"?
The purpose is to avoid confusion to the reader by repeated use of "This section" within a "section"?
Requirement 7 says:
"Use a consistent style for conformance requirements and explain how to distinguish them."
Do the "subsections?" of ATAG "Introduction" "section" have different "styles" to meet this requirement?
Does ATAG as a whole use different styles to distinguish "normative" from "informative" content?
Thanks and best wishes
Tim Boland NIST
PS - It may be useful to evaluate ATAG against References [1] and [2] in general..
[1]: W3C Manual of Style:
http://www.w3.org/2001/06/manual/
[2]: W3C PubRules:
http://www.w3.org/2005/07/pubrules
[3]: W3C QA Framework Specification Guidelines Good Practice 2:
http://www.w3.org/TR/qaframe-spec/#norm-informative-gp
[4]: W3C QA Framework Specification Guidelines Requirement 7:
http://www.w3.org/TR/qaframe-spec/#consistent-style-principle